Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Warming made to order. Look at the maps.

I ran into a wonderful site from Nasa. The maps from this site don't jive with the maps from NOAA's State of the Climate. Nor do they jive with the pronouncements of the Goddard Institute of Space Science.

Indeed, the two sets of maps are so incongruous that we must have separate climatic histories. The NASA site may have started March 2009 as they have no data earlier than that. Let's look at the temperature on land in March 2009--according to NASA

At the bottom of the March 2009 picture I put the quotation of the GISS State of the Climate proclaiming March as a really hot month. It is the 10th warmest, yet the NASA anomaly map shows more blue than read. Seems odd that such a cool month is the 10th warmest. But the map upon which GISS bases that claim is different than the above NASA map. Here is the GISS map.

Africa, nearly blue in the NASA map is turned hot in the GISS map. What a wonderful thing editing is in the hands of James Hansen's group at Goddard. The cool areas around the Himalayas and southern Russia are turned into raging heat by Goddard. Yes, be afraid, very afraid, the Goddard climatologists are going to steal your tax dollars.

Ok, one month. Let's look at April.

This map is probably about even steven between red and blue. But, in the hands of GISS it is proclaimed as the fifth hottest April and the map produced by Goddard looks like:

The broad blue area of cooling from Alaska to Florida is turned into a much smaller area on the Goddard map. The cooling in eastern Brazil, in the Nasa map is almost gone in the Hansen run Goddard map, as is the cooling in eastern Siberia, which is now all warming. Nasa shows cooling in eastern Australia, but Goddard shows warming. Of course, warming is the consensus view so shouldn't everything be warming?

Well, that is only 2 months. What about May? Below are the two maps

Once again, the cooling in Africa on the NASA map is turned into a total raging heatwave on the Goddard map. Hmmmm. Whom should we beleive??? Or is this a case where the uncertainties in the thermometer system make it impossible to know what has happened?

Greenland is not very hot in the NASA map, slightly warm, but the Goddard map makes it look like a beach in Algeria. There is almost no cooling in South America in Goddard, but significant areas of cooling on the NASA map and the location of the coolings in Australia is different on the two different maps.

Well, all of the above is anecdotal. Only 3 months. What about June?

NASA's June map shows slightly more blue than red. But look at how little blue there is on GISS's June map. One gets thirsty from the heat just looking at it.

Africa seems to be the favorite whipping boy of the GISS climatologists. If the data shows cooling there, Goddard always seems to turn it into a raging fever. Greenland turns from NASA's cooling into GISS warming. South America is mostly cool on the NASA map but mostly hot on Goddard's map. What gives with these differences?

Ok, only 4 months. July???

July was very cold across the Northern Hemisphere. In the US, 3000+ low temperature records were broken. But what do the heaters at Goddard say happened in July?

Well, once again, all hints of cooling were removed from Africa--you guys down there must be burning up by now. Goddard also removes all cooling from Australia. The coolng shown on NASA across northern Europe was removed for the most part--we don't want the Europeans to actually think critically about global warming, so Goddard helps them by always making Europe appear to warm. Keep them tax dollars flowing into the coffers of the climatologists.

August?

NASA's map shows more warming than cooling, slightly. But the difference between the two sources for temperature information continue to plague us.

Nasa's August Map.

Goddard's August Map

The broad swaths of cooling across southern Asia seen in the Nasa map are constricted and shrunken almost to the point of nonexistence in the Goddard map. Why?

Once again, cooling in southern Africa is turned into warming by Goddard. Goddard, what do you have against the people of Africa. They deserve not to be burned up. In the NASA map all of Alaska is cooling but, Goddard makes most of it warm. Good job Goddard! You don't want people to notice how you are playing with the data.

September?

In Nasa's map, most of Asia cools, most of eastern North America cools, but in Goddard's Sept. map, they turn most of it into warming. Look at the scorching heat up in Canada, yet Nasa doesn't really see scorching heat. Brazil which cools on NASA's map warms on Goddard's. And Argentina which warms on NASA's map cools on Goddards. Boy, aren't we certain what happened last September?

October.Nasa:

Goddard:

Poor Africa. Goddard is determined to burn you up. NASA will let your weather cool down every now and then, but not Goddard. Goddard allows no cooling in Asia, while NASA says parts cooled off. No cooling in Brazil is seen on the Goddard map even though it is quite clear on the NASA map. The world has a very uncertain climatic history.

November?

Most of the eastern hemisphere is cooling in the NASA map but warming on the Goddard map. Africa again--they want you African's to burn in hell. Brazil's NASA cooling is warming on Goddard. And while western Australia is cooling on NASA it is warming in Goddard.

December a very cold month.

Note that the northern hemisphere is really cold. Some parts of Siberia are 12 deg C colder than normal. Large areas of the southern hemisphere are cooling as well.

Here it is on a northern circumpolar map.

Goddard isn't finished with causing global warming yet so I can't show you their December map.

5 comments:

Are the anomalies for each month in the NASA map and in the GISS map obtained using the same base-line? For example, the GISS map for March 2009 states that the anomaly is computed with respect to the average temperature for the period 1961-1990 while for the NASA map I couldn't find this information. If the anomalies are not computed with respect the same base period there is no point comparing them. Evidently GISS likes to have a lot of red in their maps which is why they use as the base period the last cooling interval...

They are not on the same base. But before you celebrate that gotcha moment, you should realize some things here. The NASA site lets you down load the image and then analyze the distribution of temperatures in areas on the map.

When one does that one quickly sees that the cool anomalies on the NASA map are as much as 12 deg C lower than the NASA 2000-2008 baseline. Given that global warming has warmed the world by merely .8 deg C on average, to find a region with a 10 deg C cooling means that the Goddard map, with its 1971-2000 base should show a huge cold in the same place, not a mere degree or two.

I took the October and December maps. October's global NASA map average cooling was .4 deg C below the 2000-2008 mean. Fine, now GISS average anomaly between 1971 and 2000 is .23. Goddard's average anomaly is .61 between 2000-2008 That means that since 1971-2000 the world has warmed, according to Goddard, by .5 deg. And according to Goddard, Oct 2009 has warmed by .2 deg C from the Goddard 2000-2008 base.

But NASA says that the globe has cooled from the 2000-2008 base by -.4 deg C. Goddard says it has warmed by .2 deg C. Do you realize that that is a .6 deg C difference between the two maps? And that is about 60% of the 100 years of global warming!

Clearly there is a problem.

It will be interesting to see Goddard's map of December and their warming. Nasa's map says that Dec 2009 was -.4724 deg C below the 2000-2008 average. If Dec 2009 is not said to be half a degree colder, then Goddard would again be guilty of adding heat to the world's temperature map.

You are quite welcome. I have noticed over the years that changing basis year and not posting absolute temperatures hides lots of things. I have a chart of the average Siberian temperature. The basis year for the anomaly was 1961-1990 which was the absolute low in absolute temperature. Siberia warms from that point and the anomaly map looks scarey. What the anomaly map hides is that today Siberia is colder than it was a 100 years ago. Only the part of the anomaly which is scarey is shown to the public. The former Siberian high temperature isn't shown.

I see that the issue has already been raised, but the two maps are with respect to different baselines, and so naturally they won't match. The NASA site says: "These maps show land surface temperature anomalies for a given day, week, or month compared to the average conditions during that period between 2000-2008. Places that are warmer than average are red, places that were near-normal are white, and places that are cooler than average are blue. Black means there is no data." But, what is "normal"? The fact that the baseline for the Goddard maps was 1961-1990 means that much of that period was during a cooler period, before much of the recent warming trend had proceeded, and so compared to then, things generally should be warmer compared to that. So, anyway, I can't really make a valid judgment from a comparison of these two maps. Tim Boyle, Nishinomiya, Japan

About Me

I have had 39 years experience looking for oil and gas around the world, from Scotland, to Algeria, to the East Coast of the United States, South Texas, West Texas, the Rocky Mountain region, Alaska and China. I have found 33 oil fields and drilled my share of dry holes. The various positions held by me include: Manager of Geophysical Training for a major oil Co., Chief Geophysicist for a small independent oil company, Geophysical Manager - Onshore Gulf Coast, Geophysical Manager--Gulf of Mexico and Chief Geophysicist for China , Manager Geophysics for the US Offshore, Geophysical Manager for the North Sea, Director of Integrated Technology, Director of Exploration for China with a large independent oil company and lived in Beijing China. I speak Mandarin (not fluent but able to communicate). Currently I have my own geophysical consulting firm, living in Houston